California Baseball PART DEUX

from February 2023

by Backroads Magazine

BIG CITY GETAWAY

Goin’ back, I’m too tired to roam, Loma Prieta my mountain home

On the hills above Santa Cruz, in the place where I spent my youth

Neil’s Fandango – The Doobie Brothers

Monterey to San Francisco

Most friends know that Shira puts up with a lot when it comes to me and the predilections and penchants onto which I kinda latch. Music is one, and although I like all sorts of music I am still a white guy born in the late 50s and hey-day’n in the 70s. Back in the day –when we thought that having a Walkman and a 90-minute Memorex cassette tape with 45-minutes of solid riding music on each side was the end-all of music on the road - no road tape was complete without one or two songs by The Doobie Brothers.

I love these guys, even the Michael McDonald era; but it was the original group powered by Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons along with a mix of musicians including bassist Tiran Porter and drummers Michael Hossak and Keith Knudsen that started it all in the town of San Jose back in the fall of 1970.

In their book “Long Train Running,” a humble house – 285 S. 12th Street, in San Jose - was mentioned many times. Give us an address and we will seek it out.

So to get there we cut off the PCH and headed into the hills above Santa Cruz along Route 9, offering about 40 miles of riding in its purest and most complete form.

Lefts, followed by rights, and then back again. All framed through a dark tunnel of huge and ancient pines that shrouded the road, allowing only sharp dapples of bright light amongst the shadows of the giant Ents.

Make note – Route 9 towards San Jose is truly magni cent.

words: Brian Rathjen images: Brian Rathjen + Shira Kamil

Just when I began to pat myself on the back for being a true ‘Road Whisperer,’ my route vectored onto one of the dumbest single lanes ever paved. No guardrail, down the steep mountain at stupid grades of descent, immediate death sort of dumbest road I have ever ridden.

It was called Gist Road.

I glanced at my GPS and it showed what looked to be an insane squiggle of the purple route. But no, it was far worse than what I imagined. Downhill, one lane, zero line of sight. Every hairpin a decreasing radius asco!

Okay, exciting? Yes. Smart…? Not so much. A road like this can give one PTSD – Post Traumatic Squiggle Disorder.

We certainly got the ‘Gist’ of it.

We’ll avoid this one next time we go looking for ‘The Brothers Doobie.’

Yet, we did nd 285 S. 12th Street – which somebody else was now calling their home – so we grabbed a few quick images and bolted, not wanting to intrude. Yet, the state is looking to make it an Historical Site. Maybe the house value will make that all worth it, but we had miles to go this day so we got ‘rockin’ down the highway’ towards San Francisco and called it a night in a semi-cheap hotel along the 101.

We rode into downtown San Francisco in the mid-morning and easily found Oracle Park. This is a very motorcyclefriendly city and if we had a car to park it would have set us back $80 bucks!

Right down the block, there was motorcycle-only parking and we parked both bikes for the entire afternoon for $6. An amazing thing of which every big US city should take note!

Oracle Park, which opened in 2000, after the Giants played for years at Candlestick Park, was very nice and had a great open view of the bay.

Oracle Park Fun Facts…

The section of the bay beyond Oracle Park’s right eld wall is unof cially known as McCovey Cove, in honor of former Giants player Willie McCovey. There is a “Splash Hit” counter that keeps count of every bomb that lands in the bay.

The right eld area was designed to resemble the Polo Grounds of New York. This deep corner of the ballpark has been dubbed “Death Valley” and “ Triples Alley.” Like its Polo Grounds counterpart, it is very difcult to hit a home run to this area, and a batted ball that nds its way into this corner often results in a triple. It is 415 feet deep and is infamous for

San Francisco & Oakland

We’d be in and around the San Francisco and Oakland area for two days and two games.

The rst one was a contest between the San Francisco Giants (whose old New York logo looks VERY familiar) and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

bad bounces, most notably when Ichiro Suzuki hit the rst-ever inside-the-park home run in an All-Star Game.

Mascot: Lou Seal has served as the mascot of the San Francisco Giants since 1996.

It was a great day for a game, with a cool breeze coming off the bay; but not a great day for the Giants who got shut out 5 to zip!

So much for “root, root, rootin!” But, three out of ve down and two to go. With the game in the books, we rode over the Bay Bridge to the very nice Marina Inn, in San Leandro, just south of Oakland proper and minutes from the next game with the Athletics.

Free Day in San Francisco

It was nice to have a semi-free day in one of the most interesting cities in the United States; so we left the smaller Versys at the inn and Shira rode pillion back over the Bay Bridge, along the same I-80 that would take us back home if we headed east for about 2,700 miles or so.

We rode down to the Fisherman’s Wharf and, once again, easily found motorcycle parking in the two-wheel-friendly city.

In the center of this busy, touristy part of town, we found the Musée Mécanique. For us, anything we found would be new to us, but we were not expecting this place. Inside we found the extraordinaire collection of antique arcade games and display. There were more than 300 items, ranging from orchestrions, coin-operated pianos, antique slot machines, and animations, down to small bird boxes.

Almost everything worked with quarters so a more modern machine changed my 5 into 20 and we played all sorts of gizmos and games of both talent and chance. Shira is the Whack-A-Mole Champ!

Along the pier was the USS Pampanito, a Balao-class submarine, along with a Liberty Ship christened the SS Jeremiah O’Brien.

After a long lap around the wharf, lunch was taken at Boudin, San Francisco’s famed bakers of sourdough bread. They have been baking sourdough bread here, using the same original ‘Mother’, since 1840; and it is the oldest sourdough bakery in the nation.

A half sandwich and some clam chowder eaten outside made for a great people-watching spot – and there are all sorts of humans in this city for sure.

The rest of the day was taken up by riding over to the Golden Gate Bridge and then down to the corners of Haight and Ashbury, the birthplace of the 1960s counterculture movement. This historic corner draws a lively, diverse crowd looking to soak up the historic hippie vibe. Haight Street is a hodgepodge of vintage clothing boutiques, record shops, bookstores, dive bars and casual, eclectic restaurants, and, sadly, a large contingent of malingerers.

A stone’s throw from the former homes of 1960s rock luminaries such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane is the former home of another rock legend, Jimi Hendrix. The apartment at 1524 Haight Street, still a private residence, was Hendrix’s home for a few years in the 1960s.

We had a game to catch, so we skedaddled back to San Leandro and then over to the A’s Game at the Oakland

Coliseum, now called the RingCentral.

The Athletics have been moved a lot, and while there was talk of a new stadium in Oakland, there’s other talk that the A’s will move to Sin City in the near future. But, while we’re here let’s share some Fun Facts:

Oakland Coliseum …

The stadium could once hold over 64,000 fans, but the A’s wanted a more “intimate” feeling, so they closed off a large portion of the stadium and it is now limited to just 34,000 – making it the smallest capacity stadium in the MLB.

The A’s moved here from Kansas City in 1965.

The eld is of cially named after Ricky Henderson.

The Coliseum has the most foul territory of any ballpark in Major League Baseball. Thus, many balls that would reach the seats in other ballparks can be caught for outs at the Coliseum.

As a matter of fact, the foul territority is so large, they use each side as the pitcher’s bullpen. I would think that would be quite disturbing to the players.

The Athletics mascot is Stomper the Elephant. Does Nancy Pelosi know this?

Although the Oakland Athletics were in the basement, we were not disappointed. Sure, the game was a sleeper, but the reworks display afterward was the most amazing show. The eld was opened up and hundreds of fans sat in the out eld, heads looking to the sky as the lights went out and incendiary magic began.

Set to the music of Queen, the exploding works were timed to the music and it ran a full 15 minutes. It was one of the best reworks show we have ever experienced, and we need to get Steve Cohen to consider something like this at CitiField.

San Leandro to Monterey… Oops… Plan B …San Leandro to Coalinga?

Shira worked up an interesting ride back south, some of it back on Skyline Boulevard, which runs along the ridge and past the famed Alice’s Restaurant, in Woodside. This is a big motorcycle hang, and it was very busy this Saturday morning so we slowed to take a look and kept on rolling, heading down Route 9, once again riding through the copse of giant Redwoods.

In the woodsy town of Felton, we spied a small museum off to the right and pulled in to visit the Capri Taurus Bigfoot Museum.

Inside the small museum, we met Mike Rugg, who has been running the museum for decades. We found exhibits of local history, tied in with local Bigfoot sightings, and actual evidence in the form of plaster foot and hand prints along with a detailed exhibit on the Patterson-Gimlin Film. That one still image from the Patterson lm has become the image of Bigfoot worldwide, and we have all seen this everywhere.

It seems to follow us, I swear.

The Bigfoot Museum had all things Bigfoot, even a Savage Sword of Conan comic with the heroic Cimmerian battling the beast. I have since tracked this magazine down and it is happily on the shelf. Continuing down the coast the land began to open up and we rode through miles and miles of agriculture – mostly strawberries, with a scent so strong you could almost taste them.

We stopped and took a few off the vine, or bush… whatever. I have never tasted a strawberry as delicious as this.

Heading back inland we made a stop at the Elkhorn Slough (pronounced Slew). The Elkhorn Slough is a 7-mile-long tidal slough and estuary on Monterey Bay in Monterey County, California. It is California’s second largest estuary and the United States’ rst estuarine sanctuary. The community of Moss Landing and the Moss Landing Power Plant is located at the mouth of the slough on the bay.

We followed along some smaller roads marked G on the map. G must stand for ‘Great” as they were.

By early evening we rolled into Monterey and found that we were very much out of luck with our nding a room for the night. Over-crowded with the ongoing car events, and over-reaching inn keepers forced us into a Plan B. Nobody should have to pay $500 for a Motel 6.

Shira went to work on her phone to see what could be had. As usual, she eventually did nd us a room. In a town called Coalinga.

She was all smiles till I told her the hotel was… 150 miles back up the road and east over the mountains heading towards Death Valley.

To put this into a clearer perspective, let’s say you were in Times Square and your hotel for the night was in Albany, New York. Or, for our Philly friends, and Southern Contingent… from your home to the White House.

Now I know how the state got its nickname.

We rolled into the hotel as the last rays of the sun ittered away and the wide-open high desert sky gave way to the Milky Way.

In the end, we didn’t mind the extra miles at all.

Coalinga to Lebec

We did a bit of re-routing for this day, and our route took us through the town of Coalinga. The name intrigued us and I thought I’d see Christopher Walken sitting on a porch of Shady Thicket Plantation in a Civil War uniform, but it is not how the town got its name at all.

It was a major stopover in California’s coal industry.

Really? I like my version better, but it rubbed Shira the wrong way and she edited it.

In truth the town has a wonderfully restored gas station, circa1934, that is part of the town’s museum. It was closed when we rode past but was worth stopping to see it.

For me, I was far more interested in the historical monument, just outside town at the junction of CA 33 and Route 168 marking the Death of Joaquin Murieta. He was called a Robin Hood of sorts, but the hunt for him, his death, and the taking of his head – on tour – has become the stuff of legend. The storybook character Zorro was based on Murieta, and I can promise that Seymor O’Life will dig far deeper into this amazing story.

Still, life is an adventure and we got going. The rst part of this late evening haul was done lane-splitting the stand-still traf c along the coast, but once we turned eastward things opened up, and soon we were rocking down the highway near triple-digits, as the sun lit the hills and grass into a shining gilded auriferous shade.

In San Miguel we stopped to see the old mission and then caught up with our abbreviated route from the previous day. With a couple of days to ride before our nal baseball game in Los Angeles, we headed back over the hills along Route 138. We stopped at an oasis of a roadhouse in Cuyama, for a cup of coffee and a slice of pie. Here were ran into a few other riders and stayed to watch the band, CB Brand, rip up the stage that mid-August Sunday afternoon. Amazing group of musicians.

This day we had looked at the route and booked a room in advance, but before we arrived in the I-5 town of Lebec, we had one more twistalicious 40-mile piece of paved road up and over the mountains of the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge and then down through Frazier Mountain Park towards the interstate.

It was nice to get in with a few hours to spare and the hotel pool, that lay on the border with Los Angeles County, was very appealing.

Lebec to Los Angeles

Los Angelenos, all come from somewhere

To live in sunshine, their funky exile

Billy Joel

After a week and a half on the road, this would be our last longish day of riding.

Just south of Lebec, named for Peter Lebec, a French Fur Trader who got eaten by a Grizzly in 1837, we found the Vista Del Lago Visitor Center at Pyramid Lake. The lake is a reservoir formed by Pyramid Dam on Piru Creek in the eastern San Emigdio Mountains, near Castaic, Southern California. This is also near where Spain formally ceded California to Captain John Charles Frémont and the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga.

The lake is now part of the West Branch California Aqueduct, which is a part of the California State Water Project; a massive undertaking if there ever was one.

Vista Del Lago has the most amazing displays of how Californians have tackled their ongoing water problem over the years.

To see how all this is managed – especially since our trip was in the middle of one of the worst California droughts in years – was a bunch more than fascinating and certainly gave us a greater appreciation for the Golden State’s ongoing challenges.

Big Pines Highway brought us further south, and after lunch at Table Mountain, we took off on the Angeles Crest Highway. Sixty-six miles of awesome up and over the San Gabriel Mountains, the road rising to almost 8,000 feet. This is some serious country and this is a road to be taken very seriously.

An ill-timed move, wandering attention, or lack of restraint can lead to certain troubles, and unfortunately, when ‘Rescue’ is called, it often winds up a recovery.

So, well aware of this, it was the perfect stretch to practice downshifting, trail braking, and trying our best to do the Reg Pridmore smooth thing.

Both Kawasaki Versys machines excel in this environment; each with sharp handling and smooth powerplants. They made the ride that much better, as they had for the last 11 days.

About an hour later we rolled off the mountains and into Los Angeles. We had a room at USC’s hotel, just a few miles from Dodger Stadium. This was the last of the ve MLB homes in California, and the most difcult to navigate as LA is LA.

But we were able to get that nal stadium image with the Versys, and, once in the Dodger Stadium, we could practically sit anywhere we wished, so we spent most of the game wandering around, taking in the extraordinary baseball history to be found and drinking up baseball west coast-style.

Although it was not a great night for the Dodgers, it was a bit unique as it had been 1,212 days since what happened, happened. The Los Angeles Dodgers had not been shut out since April 20, 2019!

Some people go through life doing things badly. Being the Kiss of Death is important to baseball fans who do it well. When you’re the KOD, everybody else, well – they’re not. Back to Kawasaki….

All things must end, and after breakfast we took a very leisurely ride down the Paci c Coast, running by the towns Shira called home years back and pre-me.

In Huntington Beach, we made one last stop at The International Surfing Museum, dedicated to Duke Kahanamoku, considered by many as the man who truly popularized the sport. There was a section on Bruce Brown and his historic documentary The Endless Summer. For us, he was the famed creator of On Any Sunday as well – and that was something that Vanessa, my new sur ng instructor, did not know.

What an excellent sport and taking in this tiny, but immensely important museum, after watching the surfers catching a wave and sitting on top of the world for the last 20 or so miles, was a perfect way to end a pure California riding experience.

Both Kawasaki’s 1000 and 650 Versys machines are two of the best allaround machines we have ridden in a long time and they were the perfect companions for this soiree.

Five stadiums in 11 days. Three - Dodger, Anaheim, and Oakland stadiums - being some of the oldest in the nation. Only Boston’s Fenway and Chicago’s Wrigley are older. Some incredible riding, sites and meeting true baseball fans. It was amazing how many people, at each stadium, were traveling to all 30 stadiums. Baseball is not merely about the rules, the players, the owners, and the business, it is the passion behind the fans that make it great, the people we met at every game who, once they found out what we were doing, had the biggest smiles. Baseball is about all of them as surely as it is about the superstars who take the eld.

We dedicate this ride to our brother Jan, who had that passion and passed along his love of this true American sport. Now LFGM!!!!